A pivot chapter, where Brockton Bay snaps.

My marching band is showing, I think.

This week has been,,, not fun. Fortunately it's more or less been dealt with, and I don't think I'll have this perfect storm of "fuck your free time" anytime soon.

On a separate note, I'm considering writing a CYOA-based fic after this, something inspired (hehe) by A Ghost of a Chance in at least the initial kit. I've got a couple other ideas bouncing around, but that might end up starting before I finish this fic because my muse intermittently has the attention span of a hypercaffeinated kitten surrounded by laser pointers, in which case I'd go to an "every other week" schedule for this fic interspersed with that one.

The day after the death of the Slaughterhouse Nine

Eidolon was ostensibly watching as Eden made contact with Scion, because he had access to Thinker powers that didn't freeze up when looking at an Entity and at least some ability to respond on a reasonable scale if the proverbial shit hit the fan, but in actuality he was thinking about the massive changes that came about as a result of Amber's… interference wasn't the word for it, but it was close enough.

The massive shift to Cauldron's operations as a result of just her power would have been enough- the pressure off of him as the only cape who could stand up to Scion helped (even if a traitorous voice in the back of his head was screaming about his wounded pride).

But that wasn't the only thing she brought to the table.

An Entity on their side against Scion, even if they had been given the third degree after Eden had heard what, exactly, they had been doing with the vials, was cause for celebration. The fact that she retained enough connection to the capes that had been empowered from her flesh to be able to deal with the drawbacks caused by their being forced to resort to trial and error for said vials only helped, and he wasn't exactly opposed to her dealing with the issue of his power returning to its height.

The knowledge of how, exactly, things would have played out, as well as the reveal of Taylor Hebert as a Trump nearly on his level after Kurt had been able to look into her power were both also direct results of their actions.

But the fact that they had taken out the Slaughterhouse Nine with only five capes and minimal prep time, one of whom was a fresh trigger able to no-sell the Siberian's insane offense in a way that only Amber's force fields had been able to thus far?

Taken all together, and to say that Eidolon was gobsmacked was, if anything, putting it mildly. Only the reveal (courtesy of Eden) of her subconscious… well, he thought of it as a Shaker/Thinker power, but its ability to optimize situations was critical for all of her efforts coming out as something remotely approaching decent, let alone so incredibly well.

That wasn't to say that he wasn't cognizant of the issues that might arise as a result of her psych profile, of course.

According to Kurt (who, fortunately, could leverage his power towards psychology just as well as he could to combat), Amber was still dealing with the trauma that was Ellisburg. And by "dealing", he meant that she was throwing herself into her work, as evidenced by said rout of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

This report was corroborated by the impressions that Mouse Protector and Backhand had of her (that is, still traumatized by Ellisburg, and to a lesser extent, her being torn away from her universe and dumped into, as she described it, the Australia of universes. Eidolon privately found himself agreeing about this assessment of Earth Bet, not that he would tell anyone).

This was at least partially related to their (functionally boundless) power, which given the pressure that they subjected themself to brought about some comparisons with him that Eidolon preferred not to think about.

He idly noted Scion wrapping Eden in a hug, but returned to his contemplation after his emulated Entity communication power returned no aggression.

But… well, Legend had said he had made headway with convincing Amber to get therapy for her issues, and if push came to shove they could ask Eden to talk the nascent Entity around to talking to Yamada with Path to Victory. Eidolon should at least continue following suit, given what Amber had revealed about his power, but… well, that was an issue for another time, one for when Eden wasn't talking Scion out of being the harbinger of Ragnarök.

He breathed in, then out, and returned his attention to the pair. Until then, he had a job to do.

Six days after the death of the Slaughterhouse Nine

Hannah sighed, lowering herself gingerly into the chair. While Amber's gifted regeneration helped with the bruises and other small injuries that sparring with her brought (even when limiting herself just to her favored Shaker power, she was still a massive threat), it did nothing to the psychosomatic exhaustion brought around by the type of exercise that sparring with her brought. She was just glad she wasn't on Hookwolf's prisoner transport duty, although that was more a function of being on duty overnight.

Across the table from the Kurdish woman, Amber all but flopped into her chair. "Thanks for agreeing to spar, Hannah. I really needed to do something."

Hannah nodded. "Trust me, I understand how that is."

Amber laughed. "I suppose you would, what with being a Noctis cape." The Trump paused, as if considering asking something.

"What is it?"

They sighed, then shrugged. "Might as well. Do you remember the… the vision you had? When you triggered?"

Hannah froze for a moment, then forced her power to stop cycling. "Yes. Did you-"

Amber waggled her head. "Yes and no… It's complicated, but for all intents and purposes… Fuck. Right. Hannah, you have to keep this quiet, okay? It's not… that dangerous, not anymore, but it's not something we want to get out yet, okay?"

Hannah looked directly into Amber's eyes for a moment, assessing, then nodded. "If you ask me to, and if it's not hurting anyone, I'll keep it quiet."

"Alright." Amber took in a deep breath, then breathed out tiredly. "Alright. It's the thing that's projecting Zion, and the source of powers."

"What." Hannah blinked repeatedly, gobsmacked.

Amber nodded. "Like I said. Complicated."

Hannah sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You don't say."

"In my defense," said Amber, "I'm not the one who decided to keep this hidden. It's been going on since before my time. I just… Well, I came back just in time to watch it get declassified."

"No, no, I don't blame you, it's just…" Hannah trailed off, having had a thought. "Wait. Declassified. Does that mean-"

"The original Protectorate know. They've got… an independent organization that's been doing research on the phenomenon," said Amber, who (as Hannah would say with the benefits of hindsight and an eventual public reveal of Cauldron) was massively underselling things. "He's essentially a magic space whale-god-thing that's been going around the universe, trying to get around entropy."

"That's… hard to believe."

Amber laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. "Yeah, yeah. I get that. It's… spectacularly bullshit, from a logic standpoint, but if the universe were logical we wouldn't have the human body set up so that, to put it in civil engineering terms, we have a sewage pipeline run through a recreational area."

"Recreational- Ha!" Hannah laughed as she translated the terms into their equivalents in the human body. "Where'd you hear that one?"

Amber eyed her shrewdly, but ultimately went along with her redirection. "Back home. I don't remember where I read that, exactly, but it was the type of thing that-" they bit their sentence off. "Never mind."

Ah, right. Amber was one of the few Protectorate capes like her, in that their history had cut them off from their family and home before triggering.

"Sorry."

Amber shook her head, chuckling ruefully. "Not your fault. Touchier subject than I expected, combined with literally all the things. Good news is, Hero and Mouse finally convinced me to go to therapy, so it'll hopefully become just another thing."

Hannah nodded. "Good. I'm glad you're finally feeling ready to take this next step, and-"

Danny exploded through the door, eyes wide and frantic. "Taylor's gone."

Hannah paled. Besides being Danny's daughter, she was an extremely powerful Trump, with the ability to create a projection of one cape she'd touched (as determined by power testing focused around Amber's analysis over the past few days). She didn't have many powers available at the moment, those being Danny (who required miniatures to use his power), Armsmaster, Thomas Calvert, Tom Stranger, and Kid Win, so it was relatively easy to keep her confined, since the projection's range was limited to about fifteen feet from her and further constrained by line of sight, so there was no way for her to manage combat without external tools, even if she did have echoes of their skills available.

"Mother fuck of a shit." Amber shot to their feet. "I knew I should have picked up that fucking Dowser ability."

She snapped her fingers, and the ghostly green duplicate of her that was her version of the Siberian (and wasn't that odd to think about?) appeared. "I'll send out my projection to help look around, but I'm staying here on the Rig so I can put together a clair… hang on. Door to Taylor Hebert."

Hannah blinked at Amber when nothing happened. "What was that supposed to be?"

"Friendly Mover, stationary portals. Functionally unlimited range. Dammit, that was the fastest solution. Okay. Right. I'll… Siberian searching, me here and putting together something that could help me track her. Danny, if you've got any fliers available, send 'em out." Said projection rose into the air, then flew out the door.

Hannah stood. "I'll go get Velocity off the console so he can help."

Danny stood still, eyes lost in the distance, before Amber clapped their hands in front of his face. "Dammit, Danny, get your head in the game! The sooner we get working, the sooner we get Taylor back."

"failed…"

"The only one who failed," snapped Amber, already falling into the deadly relaxed state that Hannah had seen so many times before a fight, "was the dumb motherfucker who decided that she was an acceptable kidnap target, and that is likely to be the biggest of their life." She looked up at Hannah. "Go relieve Velocity. I've got this."

When the Blaster arrived at the console, it was to a grimly determined Velocity.

"The Empire is springing Hookwolf. They're actually fielding Allfather, Iron Rain, and Rune all at once."

Just as Hannah opened her mouth to respond, a voice came from the console. "Dispatch, Assault."

"Go, Assault," said Velocity.

"Krieg, Cricket, Stormtiger, and Victor are engaging Shuhari and Oni Lee in the middle of the Docks."

Velocity made eye contact with Hannah, who shook her head, then responded. "Hold position, for now. Krieg's power isn't great for either you or Battery, but we'll try and route Heavyweight and Dauntless from their patrol to help if you can keep track of them."

"Bad news, Console," drawled Heavyweight. We've got Kaiser, the twins, and Othala facing off against Lung, and Yokai is fighting Crusader."

"We've got Skidmark and Squealer driving down the street, too," said Dauntless, followed immediately by the sound of a high-velocity something bouncing off his shield. "We're engaging them while we can."

"Well, shit." Somehow, Hannah couldn't find it in herself to dispute Assault's sentiment, since this big an assault meant that only a few minor capes, like the PAC's Bushido (a minor Brute with enhanced balance and accuracy, which he made use of with a massive recurve bow firing Toybox-sourced trick arrows) as well as their limited non-cape forces, and whatever members of New Wave weren't busy, to fight off the street-level Empire members, not to mention other villains in the city like Capo, the Undersiders, or Circus, since both Mouse Protector and Backhand were out of the city to help guard the Madison portal to Aleph thanks to an outbreak of food poisoning.

Some days, it didn't pay to be a hero.

Capo grinned under his faceless mask, very much satisfied with how his strategic leaks had stirred up the city. Thanks to his contacts with the police, he'd been able to to figure out the route that Hookwolf's transport was taking thanks to road closures, which he'd leaked to the Empire. Luckily enough, his transport was only being guarded by Armsmaster and Triumph, since they were relying on secrecy over raw power to protect them, so the combination of the Empire's best offensive Movers overwhelmed the mostly-melee capes and token handful of PRT troops handily.

The Empire had also easily been maneuvered into sending out their other capes to make a statement, as it were, tying up the rest of the Protectorate and PAC capes, leaving their nonpowered members to wreak havoc all but unopposed. The absence of Backhand and her partner was fortuitous as well, but there were more than enough capes in the mix to tie them up too, had they been there.

The chaos these events created allowed him to grab his two new capes. He'd had to use more than a few resets to get Shadow Stalker to bring in her old victim alive and unharmed enough to get his plans rolling soon, but Regent was more than capable of bringing in the Thinker on his own. Say what you will about Heartbreaker, but his particular… management style created extremely pliable subordinates. It was too bad he hadn't been able to poach more of the man's children, but ultimately the only cape he could rely on was himself, and those he either had broken himself or held direct leverage over.

While at the moment that was only Grue through his sister and Hellhound through her dogs, soon he'd have a Thinker and an incredibly powerful Trump, and then he could work on securing his hold over Shadow Stalker and Regent.

While at this point keeping Shadow Stalker hidden seemed to be more trouble than it was work, he was confident that he'd be able to insert her into the Undersiders soon enough. She'd already paid dividends off the minor manipulations it took to make sure she wasn't adequately contained by the arresting officers, and this would push that even farther. After all, she only needed to break once, and he had as many tries as he needed.

Noticing that Miss Hebert was finally waking up, he finished the email he was preparing to acquire the services of the Travelers from Accord (and also thanking him for allowing him to use Citrine to set up an area that protected him from Thinkers, it helped him cut ties safely with the disgustingly selfless Cauldron), adjusted his finely tailored suit, and opened the microphone that connected to the room where he was keeping his two newest acquisitions.

"Hello there…"

Taylor blinked her gummy eyes open, then reached up to rub at her eyes, closing them again, but stopped when something held her wrist down. What hap-

Shadow Stalker.

Somehow, Sophia'd gotten into the hospital the day before she was due to be released (even with Stitch in Time's healing, they needed to keep an eye on her in case of some complication came up), held her down, and jabbed Taylor with something that made her go unconscious before she could use her projection for anything.

"Oh, good. You're awake."

Taylor's eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright, seeing the blank concrete of the room, the strap holding her arm to the bed, and the blonde curled up in the opposite corner.

"Hi. I'm… I'm Lisa." She waved the hand that wasn't toying with a similar binding to Taylor's.

"Taylor."

A speaker high on the wall (good materials out of her reach, said the echo of Armsmaster in her head) crackled to life. "Hello there, young ladies. Sleep well?"

"I must say," replied Lisa, smirking, "the accommodations could use a little work. What does a girl have to do to get some room service?"

"I'm afraid," came the smooth voice, "that there's not much point in getting your hopes up. The two of you will be working with me from now on."

"And if we don't want to?" asked Taylor, pulling up her shade of Mr. Stranger.

"In that case, I hope you're not too attached to your father."

"You say that, but I'm not seeing any reason for me not to just jump ship," said Lisa while Taylor was borrowing Stranger's mindset to work through the implications. He probably didn't know that her father was GameMaster, otherwise he'd have been less cavalier about that threat…

"In that case, miss Livsey, I will have no choice but to bring in your parents. They would be very… grateful, I think, to me for returning their wayward daughter."

Lisa clenched her fists and her mouth compressed down to a single line, but she said nothing.

"In that case, I believe I'll let you two get to know each other. You will be working together soon enough, and you will need to accept that." The speaker cut out with a crackle of static.

Lisa looked at Taylor. "Well, great. Capo's got some kind of diversion going on, something to hide us going missing."

Taylor shook her head, peeling the strap on her arm back. "Dad's coming for me."

"You… well, shit. He really stuck his dick in the beehive, didn't he." Lisa winced, eyes unfocused, then shook her head. "Look, I wouldn't put it past him to have some kind of countermeasure for the Protectorate."

"Trust me," said Taylor, grinning, "There's no countering Stitch in Time." She gestured the projection of Stranger over closer to them. "Now come on, let's see if two Thinkers can't figure out a way out before we get rescued."

This one came out longer than I expected, oops.

I've been keeping Stranger's power under wraps more or less for this, but some of you might have figured it out already.

The next few chapters will probably be split between Taylor's perspective and Amber's perspective, because I want to have the progression of both the E88 war and the interactions of Taylor with Lisa progress at the same time, and we'll probably get Stranger's actual power in that.

I'm trying new and proposing a discussion question for the comments/thread, we'll see how it goes.

This week's question is "Does August Prince's power count as an All or Nothing power?"

That's it, so read, review, and have a nice day!